VALUING SOCIETY FIRST

The document proposes a feebate system for India—where inefficient vehicles pay a fee and efficient ones receive a rebate—as a market-based alternative to static fuel economy standards. It argues that such a policy could help India reach its goal of 100 percent electric vehicle adoption by 2030 without relying on public funds. Drawing on case studies from Norway, France, and Ontario, the authors suggest a three-phase implementation strategy: establishing a professional design body, implementing a revenue-neutral point-of-sale feebate, and eventually expanding to other vehicle segments and the used car market.

• A feebate is a market-based policy that aligns private interests with societal goals by penalizing polluting vehicles and rewarding efficient ones, potentially operating without public funds through a self-financing, revenue-neutral design.
• Feebates are presented as superior to fuel economy or greenhouse gas standards because they provide continuous incentives for innovation and allow manufacturers to exceed standards, whereas static standards offer no incentive to outperform.
• Norway's feebate-like program, which uses a pivot point of 120 gCO2/km, helped reduce the sales-weighted average of new passenger vehicle emissions by approximately 15 percent between 2009 and 2012.
• France's 'bonus-malus écologique' reduced sales-weighted average CO2 emissions per kilometer of new vehicles by 6 percent in its first year, though its 'doughnut hole' pivot range (131–160 gCO2/km) resulted in incomplete coverage.
• Ontario's program is considered largely unsuccessful because its monetary incentives were too low to change consumer behavior and its step-function design only motivated marginal 'edge effect' improvements.
• India's current 'Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric (and Hybrid) Vehicles' (FAME) program has had limited impact, benefiting fewer than 150,000 vehicles between April 2015 and June 2017.
• India's Corporate Average Fuel Consumption (CAFC) norms, adopted in April 2017, require fuel consumption to be below 130 gCO2/km until 2022 and below 113 gCO2/km thereafter, but lack the continuous incentives provided by a feebate.
• The authors propose a three-phase implementation for India: first, creating an independent professional body for design; second, implementing a revenue-neutral point-of-sale feebate; and third, expanding to other segments and the used vehicle market.
• To ensure equity and preserve consumer choice, the document recommends using size-based vehicle classes with different pivot points rather than a single pivot point for all vehicles.
• The proposed feebate for India should exclude electricity generation sources from its efficiency criterion to avoid unfairness caused by varying state-level grid emissions and the lack of consumer choice in energy sources.

APA

Juyal, S., Sanjeevi, H., Sharan, A., Singh, S., Srivastava, A., Goldfield, E., Laemel, R., Lovins, A., Newcomb, J., & Stranger, C. (2017). VALUING SOCIETY FIRST. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/11/Report_Valuing_Society_First_Feebate.pdf

Chicago

Juyal, Shikha, Harkiran Sanjeevi, Aalekh Sharan, Shashvat Singh, Anil Srivastava, Emily Goldfield, Ryan Laemel, et al. VALUING SOCIETY FIRST. RMI, 2017. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/11/Report_Valuing_Society_First_Feebate.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Juyal |first1=Shikha |last2=Sanjeevi |first2=Harkiran |last3=Sharan |first3=Aalekh |last4=Singh |first4=Shashvat |last5=Srivastava |first5=Anil |last6=Goldfield |first6=Emily |last7=Laemel |first7=Ryan |last8=Lovins |first8=Amory |last9=Newcomb |first9=James |display-authors=etal |title=VALUING SOCIETY FIRST |publisher=RMI |date=November 2017 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/11/Report_Valuing_Society_First_Feebate.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{juyal2017valuing, author = {Juyal, Shikha and Sanjeevi, Harkiran and Sharan, Aalekh and Singh, Shashvat and Srivastava, Anil and Goldfield, Emily and Laemel, Ryan and Lovins, Amory and Newcomb, James and Stranger, Clay}, title = {{VALUING SOCIETY FIRST}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2017}, month = nov, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/11/Report_Valuing_Society_First_Feebate.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }